September 29, 2012

Under Water around the Bay Area has been taken off SFGate. This was an interactive feature that showed what percentage of each zip code’s homes had mortgages on them for more than they were worth. While it was a great idea, the data hadn’t been updated in several years. Thanks to Burbed reader JF for reporting the broken link; we’ve removed it from our collection.

Meanwhile, when Burbed readers send in listings to some neighborhoods, we can’t write them up fast enough. This cute Palo Alto house sold for over $300K, or 23% over the asking price. And the Redfin agent says it’s impossible to park nearby!

With this crazy overbidding, can the $800,000 crapshacks of 2006 be far behind? Is Burbed about to discover that what’s old is new again? This is going to be GREAT! We can rerun every single house from six years ago and nobody could tell the difference!

Tell us what you’re seeing at Open Houses, or about anything. It’s Open Thread time!

Not another one of those backwards houses! And by backwards we mean a “luxury” type McMansion that has an impressive address, but forgot to bring the school district along for the ride. Let nomadic explain:

New construction for a premium in the slums of Los Gatos!

I’m calling them out because on the “features” tab it says: “Excellent Los Gatos and San Jose Public & Private Schools.” They must be referring to private schools in Los Gatos, because the public schools (while quite good) are in the Union Elementary and Campbell Union High School districts.

Redfin has the location all wrong for these houses on the Google map, which makes me think they’re taking liberties with the lot sizes too. If you look on the map and pan down Union Avenue to just north of Leewood Court, you can see the two of them nuzzled together on the construction site.

Wow, it looks AWFUL on the satellite view – worse than the view from Union.

The better-looking but much too close companion chateau finally went Pending a couple of weeks ago. And given how lovey-dovey these two homes are, who wants to guess that the lot size of 10,500 is for both of them? (Lot size of 117 is conveniently provided in acres to make comparisons quick and easy! That’s 11,326 sf. You’re welcome.)

Take a gander at this piece, clearly written to complement their first article, and discuss whether your like their housing examples or Burbed’s examples. (Hint: the correct answer is CNBC. That is if by “correct” we really mean “completely wrong.”) They had the right idea, but they just couldn’t find the listings that show how awesome the RBA is.

Silicon Valley’s dynamic, tech-based economy has inflated home prices in the area for more than two decades. But lately, thanks to a rash of IPO’s and the mobility of global wealth, relatively modest properties in the suburban towns south of San Francisco have been going for mansion-like prices.

Sales of homes for $1 million or more doubled in the towns south of San Francisco in the past year, passing Beverly Hills and Miami, where the sumptuous palaces snapped up by the rich look more the part.

The current boom is not the result of an avalanche of tech start-ups. Instead, the Valley has been flooded by employees of established companies like Facebook and Google, who enjoyed a personal “liquidity event” when their companies went public in the past few years.

This article is basically the other article, sentences scrambled around, and a few pictures of presentable homes to go with. There is one and only reason we alert you to this article, and that’s the wretched hive of scum and villainy called the comments. It’s the usual “Silicon Valley has fine dining, beach, mountains, biking all close by, and the weather is fantastic” versus “Are you kidding, I can buy a house like that for $105K here in East Fumbuck, Nebraska!”

August 12, 2012

Remember the basic premise of The Producers? If you oversell interest in a Broadway show, and then deliberately produce the worst musical you can, none of your investors will complain when they lose all their money… and you keep their 40,000% ownership. So our intrepid producer duo went off in search of the worst script they could find, and… hilarity ensues.

So why hasn’t anyone tried this idea with real estate as well? Maybe it’s because not enough in the industry figured out the same trick: in a market downturn you can make more money not selling houses than you can selling them. Read on to know it Tolls for thee.

As newly minted empty-nesters, Daven Sharma and his wife, Anu, spent 2010 searching for a spot for their dream house with views of San Francisco Bay. They found it in the Hayward hills, within a Toll Brothers development.

Shortly after plunking down about $100,000 in deposits, the couple’s dream fizzled. The Sharmas lost not only the house, but their deposit, attorney and arbitration fees — and a sense of justice.

Critics say and records show that Pennsylvania-based Toll Brothers — the nation’s largest luxury homebuilder, with developments in Contra Costa, Alameda, Santa Clara and San Mateo counties — has made it a regular practice to collect forfeited deposits from prospective homebuyers. In fact, it was the builder’s No. 1 source of profit during the down years of the housing market, according to a Maryland class action lawsuit.

From fiscal years 2006 to 2011, according to its own SEC reports, the publicly traded company retained $123 million in forfeited deposits from 3,300 prospective homebuyers.

Read that again: during the housing slump, the number one source of profit was forfeited deposits. At least that’s what one lawsuit says.

There are 155,000 results for the search Toll Brothers Lawsuit. This website has quite a story to tell. While it’s about severe construction problems, the other part of the story is the lengths their attorneys would go to to avoid fixing the house. Ellen Nevens has been fighting Toll Brothers for twelve years. That’s a lot of time and effort to build a house badly and then not fix it. It would be much easier to not build it in the first place.

And that’s what happened to Daven and Anu Sharma when they put a $98K deposit on a Hayward hills homesite in a Toll Brothers community. The Sharmas found out what many others have previously experienced: the sales contract has little flexibility on loan funding. And if, or maybe we should say when, the loan isn’t funded, the contract says no loan means Toll keeps the deposit. The Sharmas indeed lost in arbitration, plus they had to pay another $5600 in fees.

Jim Daman had to sue to get some of his $104K deposit back on a home in Danville. When Toll Brothers didn’t build his house within the promised six months, he watched its market value sink. He eventually settled for $70K. Compared to the Sharmas, he did well. Someone the corporation won the arbitration, claiming that customization had been done and they had outlays. Yet the photo of the dirt lot above is all that was in place when the Sharmas cancelled their contract because their current house didn’t sell.

Here’s the contract language that one attorney called confusing, Daman called “99.9 percent in their favor” and another tried diagramming on a whiteboard to understand it:

Buyer’s failure to fulfill any of such conditions or the termination or expiration of the mortgage commitment after it is received, for any reason, shall not release Buyer from its obligations under the Agreement.

A latter attorney notes that Toll offered some of his Pennsylvania clients loan commitments with conditions that made no financial sense, such as amounts far larger than the agreed sales price. When buyers balked, then Toll would keep the deposit, claiming they were in breach.

“They can make more money by not building the house,” he said.

While the Sharma’s Arundel Drive homesite is not listed, this nearby home on Stonebrae Road is. It looks quite lovely when photographed with a sunset, and it’s “within the gates of TPC Stonebrae Country Club.” According to the virtual tour, the builder is not Toll Brothers, but a firm called True Life Communities who seem to be avoiding any hint of describing themselves with specifics.

But given the story of the Sharmas and their Arundel Drive site being so nearby, we assumed it was the same community. (In fact there are several different builders.) And if you buy this house you’ll have quite the run of neighbors to entertain!

July 4, 2012

Usually Burbed doesn’t visit the same city two days in a row, but today’s a holiday, and we need to celebrate! Thanks very much to Burbed reader Overheard in San Carlos for passing along this celebration.

July 2, 2012

It’s always fun to revisit a house that’s previously been given some Burbed love. Today’s house is a foreclosure with an unpermitted garage conversion, exactly what you’d expect to find in Old Palo Alto. Thanks very much to Burbed reader Wendie for today’s cognitive dissonance.

Amasing 4 bd 4 ba in old town palo alto . newly remodeled with new presidential comp roof, new paint and fixtures, refinished hardwood floor, double pane windowes, stainles still appliances , lots of closets. garage had been converted to a family room and aditional room including full bath by the previous owner , permit unknown. this may not been included in sf. huge price reduction.

Here’s what Wendie had to say about this house:

Didn’t you highlight this house a few months ago as a short sale? I think it was listed as 1.2 back then….

Why yes, we certainly did mention this house, but it was last September, and it was on bank auction list.

But back then the agent wasn’t mentioning all the excitement in the former garage! And this house is just full of excitement. A huge price reduction! A foreclosure last October! Yes, a foreclosure, not just in the Real Bay Area, but in Old Palo Alto. Who knew that Larry Page could walk to a foreclosure in his own neighborhood? (We would have said Steve Jobs, what with all the “walk to Steve Jobs’ house” comments about this neighborhood, but he could not walk to this house when it foreclosed as he passed away one week earlier.)

And if the garage and the price and famous dead neighbors isn’t enough excitement about this house for you, here is the icing on the cake. You’d be buying the house from the agent herself.

Be sure to read all contracts carefully, because based on that listing copy, this may not be one of those agents who pays attention to silly little details. Annoying little details such as spelling or capitalization or prices or whether a contract is actually signed. And if you’re not a detail person either, then the two of you are a match made in heaven. Or at least Old Palo Alto, which is practically the same thing.

Take a look at picture 13. There’s a sickly green glow [I know it’s HDR] but what could it also be?

1) Extra-terrestrials cowering at the side of the bed?

2) The agent forgot to clean the nuclear fuel on the floor?

3) Someone forgot Excalibur on their home tour?

4) The briefcase full of cash the owners are going to take to the bank?

While you’re on this home…check out the discrepancy of the pool size in two pictures. Image 20 makes it look HUGE! Image 22 makes it look puny!

Poltergeist in the bedroom? Call 1–800–GHOSTBUSTERS! Meanwhile, did you notice who is selling this property? This place must be “corporate owned,” because the agent’s name is, I kid you not, Kimberly Clark. That’s Kimberly Clark. Makers of these fine paper products which have a lot in common with real estate agents.

Enjoy this spacious, single-level, View Contemporary features 3 Bedrooms, 3.5 Bath plus formal Library/Study, on a quiet, private cul-du-sac in the highly sought-after Woodside Hills community. Live-in, remodel to suit, or build anew to take advantage of this huge 1.04 * acre lot with sweeping western hill views. The home at its prime was featured in Architectural Digest and Gentry Magazine.

That first sentence doesn’t scan at all. It starts off telling you to enjoy the house but gets lost in panting over the features. Just because you’re spending over a million on a house doesn’t mean you should expect a realtard capable of proofing his own copy. Anyway, here’s why nomadic sent this property in:

This house isn’t that bad, but a phrase in the copy is amusing: “the home at its prime was featured in Architectural Digest and Gentry Magazine. When? I’d guess around 1960. Hmm, according to their website, Gentry Magazine (apparently a pretentious publication) was established in 1993. That hardly seems possible!

1993? Then what’s with the mermaid on the website? Splash came out in 1984, and even The Little Mermaid beat the 90s by a month and a half. But if you read the current issue online, page 5 has a much pricier place in Woodside with the same high-falutin’ terms as eBay. Yup, a minimum bid and a Buy it Now price.

Okay, back to this house. “The house isn’t that bad”? How could it be bad? It has mawbul kawlums! Some of the other photos, though, suggest someone with too much money and no understanding of the term “less is more.” Because when it comes to the photos of this house, more is definitely not more. Maybe someone should tell the agent that plastering his name prominently across every single listing photo only adds to that “gilding the gold-plated fixtures” feeling.

And that doesn’t include the utterly pedestrian street name. Look, if you have enough wealth to buy in Woodside, you do not want to live on a street that reminds you of your mother’s crappy dishwasher. Maybe you could make a donation to the Mayor’s favorite charity in return for a declaration renaming the street Miele Manor or Bosch Boulevard. If you need inspiration, start leafing through Gentry Magazine.

April 17, 2012

Recently, we took a look at a house in Midtown Palo Alto that a number of commenters thought was overbuilt for the neighborhood. That reminded me of a similarly situated structure in Sunnyvale, so I pulled it up for nostalgia’s sake. What a delightful surprise to discover that it’s once again for sale! It was relisted just in time for April Fool’s Day, and at the same attractive price as it was three years ago.

Extraordinary six-bedroom, four and one half-bath custom estate perfect for executive lifestyle of luxury and unmatched class. Within this showcase home you will find a remodeled ONE-OF-KIND gourmet kitchen featuring best-in-class appliances with close access to the formal dining room, casual family room and truly alluring outdoor venue that is perfect for entertainment.

This time around, they’re not letting us see the inside. And it would need a lot of pictures, because this property has a FAR of 0.60. That can’t even be LEGAL in Sunnyvale.

But, this is a Custom Bahl Home! And if you haven’t heard of Bahl Homes, they built a few tracts around Silicon Valley, including some zero lot line curiosities and the snout-house “patio homes” just around the corner from this place. Now that they’re done with building tracts, they remain as a real estate company. Fortunately for us, today’s house has its own webpage on Bahl’s site, with pictures even! We don’t know when these were taken, though, as it’s been listed and sold many times since its construction. Have a look at those pictures and more, after the break.

April 6, 2012

We’ve been spending too much time in the Valley. Today’s photopalooza is courtesy of Burbed reader Kevin. And Kevin’s writeup, coupled with the amazing pictures of this thousand a foot Marina manse, are all that’s needed for a give-it-up Guest Post.

Disclaimer

The posts on this weblog are provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confer no rights. The opinions expressed herein are my own personal opinions and only represent the view of Burbed.com's editor. Comments are the views of commenters, not Burbed. If companies, properties, etc are mentioned on this blog, you should assume that I have a financial stake in them. Trust no one.